'The Republic of Australia, A New identity'

Susan Ryan, Deputy Chair, Australian Republican Movement
Presentation to the Victorian Republican Council
20 August 2003

What is an Australian?

This is a question that we don't often ask directly, much less try to answer in anything more than clichés.

It is not a question Australians ask each other every day, but it is there, basic to our sense of society. Most Australians confront it when they travel overseas, and curious foreigners ask us what we are, what we are like, what is important to us. It is a natural expectation round the world that a nation's symbols and systems of government refect the values of the country. Thus overseas, people are often amazed, incredulous when they learn that the Head of State for Australia is the British Monarch. It just doesn't fit, they say.

It doesn't.

Having to admit to this anomaly in our national arrangements, in my experience, always brings Australia down in the estimation of the questioner. But why, they persist, why would a prosperous, free country like Australia not have its own Head of State? The implication is that there is something wrong with us, with our sense of self, something immature, incomplete.
The question of national identity does form part of our ongoing national debate, at least by implication.

In political brawls, it is not uncommon for one side to accuse the other of being "unaustralian". That usually means, not agreeing with the accuser.

In the recent controversial decision of the Australian Government to commit Australian soldiers to active participation in the Iraq war, critics of this move were accused of being unaustralian, even though at the outset, polls showed over 60% of Australians were against Australia's joining the war. So well over half the population were suddenly labelled "unaustralian". Disagreement with a government decision was enough to deprive us of our national identity.

Following this practice, the answer to the question "what is an Australian" becomes "a person who approves of every act of Prime Minister John Howard". A frightening thought? Well, an odd one at least in a parliamentary democracy where, most of the time citizens are more or less evenly divided on which party they want to run the country, and political parties generally tolerate, internally at least, a range of views

I am a great supporter of our parliamentary system, the Westminster system. Unlike the constitutional monarchy, parliamentary democracy has been a most valuable heritage from our colonial founders. I predict moreover that again, unlike the monarchy, it will be an enduring heritage, long outlasting the monarchy which is in serious decay and has not many more years to go even in England, its home, let alone here in Australia. Our political system, adversarial as it is, is robust, open, and accountable. It is fine. It is only at the head, at the symbolic peak of our constitutional and political system that we have a great big problem.

Of course, Australians have no problems claiming strong national identity in other areas of community endeavour. When it comes to sporting events, which it always does in Australia the question is straightforward. It is Australian to win. To lose, smacks of unaustralianess.

But let us consider what happens next, particularly in light of those who like to claim that Australians are perfectly happy with our colonial trappings and symbols of monarchy, that there is no need to change our foreign Head of State for an Australian.

When an Australian team or athlete does live up to the requirement for nationhood and wins an international event, Australians recognise we need some appropriate symbols to acknowledge the victory. The playing of the national anthem is the first thing. But which anthem? The anthem issue is an instructive example of how easy it is, in the end, to change our symbols of identity.

Remember the fuss when Prime Minister Gough Whitlam decided that "God Save the Queen" was not appropriate for our national anthem? Conservatives went berserk and predicted national disaster. Whitlam pressed on and gave Australians a choice on the matter. Australians took the opportunity and chose Advance Australia Fair. Just as well. Can you imagine the Sydney Olympics being as popular and inspirational if every time we won a medal the band belted out God Save the Queen? All the foreign visitors would have thought Britain was winning all those Golds.

It seems ridiculous now, yet maintaining God Save the Queen was an item of faith for Conservative Australians in the early seventies.

Remember too, how it suddenly became impossible, in terms of public opinion, to have our head of State, the Queen, to open the Sydney Olympics?

By popular demand we had her admired Australian delegate, William Deane; another lesson, perhaps not fully taken at the time, about how Australians really see themselves.

If the referendum on the Republic had succeeded, Australians even those who had serious misgivings would be quite used to the idea by now and the debate would have moved on. That is what Australians are like.

Changing our Head of State does matter to our sense of identity; in fact it is essential to our having a clear and widely supported sense of ourselves.

I believe there are ideas and qualities most of us like to think of as Australian. If you went and asked a random sample of Australians, you would get a positive response to values such as egalitarianism, fairness, tolerance, and democracy.

That is how we like to see ourselves.

How do our national symbols and systems reflect these values? Our electoral system is fine: every citizen gets a vote. Every citizen can stand for election. Our parliamentary system is fine. If the government moves too far away from these values, the people can sack them.

But what about our constitutional arrangements? How do these values: egalitarian, fair, tolerant, democratic stack up against a constitutional monarchy?

Egalitarianism: how can we pride ourselves that we have a culture that treats every one as equals yet put up with a Head of State who has to be born into the position?

The position is one to which no Australian can aspire or ever achieve.

The Head of State is not there because of service to the community, rapport with the people, or a capacity to embody what we like best about ourselves.

The Head of State is such by virtue only of inheritance and the correct bloodlines. The concept of hereditary monarchy contradicts the meaning of egalitarian.

Fairness: the most poplar saying of the Australian national character is "Fair go". What does it mean? Surely it means that in the way our society is organised, in the way resources are distributed, everyone should have a go.

The British monarch is one of the wealthiest people in the world: all of that wealth comes from inheritances, not from effort or creativity. In the UK poverty is still a serious problem. Homelessness seems to be a permanent part of the post Thatcher landscape. Yet the Head of State is obscenely rich. And she is also our Head of State.

In Australia we also have huge social problems stemming from our failure to be truly fair to all citizens, including our indigenous population. If we really want a Fair Go to sum up what we are about in Australia, then we had better get moving and make sure we have a Head of State system that can reflect and embody this noble sentiment.

Tolerance: although in practice we have strained this value very badly from time to time, most recently and disgracefully in relation to the asylum seekers who manage to get to our shores, tolerant is something we want to be. We believe tolerance is a part of our true national character.
Let's see how that stacks up against the British Monarchy: the institution discriminates first and most blatantly on the basis of religion. The Monarch cannot be, of cannot marry, a Catholic. How does this fit with our multicultural society where about 20% are from catholic backgrounds and Muslims, Buddhists, Jews and non-believers form large chunks of our community? Our Head of State system is totally discriminatory. It excludes all other religions: hardly appropriate for a 21st century multicultural democracy.

Then there is gender discrimination: yes the current monarch is a woman: but only because she was lucky enough not to have a brother. If she had, no job!!!

And so it goes on. Are we democratic? Proudly so, most Australians believe.

Yet democracy means decisions by the people for the people. Under our current constitutional arrangements, the Australian people have no say in who becomes our Head of State The occupant of that role is determined by the vagaries of the reproductive behaviour of the British royals.

So here we are, well into the first century of the third millennium, a modern, multicultural democracy set in the Asian region and our Head of State is the British Monarch, the embodiment of a system that is archaic, discriminatory, exclusive and irrational.

It does matter. Our society is in many ways in deep trouble. I believe a lot of the malaise, the inward looking narrow concerns that sociologists like Hugh MacKay have identified as strongly growing trends, have to do with this lack of a clear, strong identify that fits with our most cherished values.

Let me give you just one example of this malaise, this belittlement of our national identity: the Block.

When I read in the papers that the TV program the Block was the highest rating show since the Olympics, I really worry about the state of our national identity. Is fiddling around with a bit of Sydney real estate in order to make a few dollars really at the heart of Australia? I don't think so.

But we have no time to lose. Let's get our republican strategy out there, and give Australians a chance to decide who we are and who we want to represent us.

I suggest we make sure that our next big republican push not only addresses those tricky matters of constitutional amendments, methods of selection of a Head of State, reserve powers and so on, but really gives life and meaning to what it means to be an Australian, and what it will mean for us the have an Australian Republic.